Biazon: Arroyo still responsible for emergency declaration

THE LIFTING of the state of national emergency does not absolve the executive department and its agents who violated the basic constitutional rights of the people, Senator Rodolfo Biazon said Friday.

“There will be a day of reckoning,” Biazon said in a briefing, minutes after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo announced that she was lifting Proclamation 1017.

Biazon said that Arroyo decided to lift the proclamation following a meeting with US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill.

Hill had said that Washington welcomed Arroyo’s “desire to lift the state of national emergency as soon as possible, and I understand from her statement that in fact the government is reviewing that position.”

Biazon said Arroyo apparently lifted the proclamation due to Washington’s sentiments and not because of the people's calls for its lifting.